1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to integrating business management functions, and more particularly to an item data management system for use in the design and build industry to manage the lifecycles of items used in a project.
2. Description of the Related Art
Designing and building an asset is a complicated and long process that requires the diverse services of many participants. These project participants may include architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, interior designers, etc. (often referred to as disciplines) who are responsible for creating the design plans for the project. The project participants may include a purchasing agent or purchasing department that is responsible for purchasing items (e.g., furniture, fixtures and equipment, etc.) for integration into the project, as well as other individuals and entities, including but not limited to vendors and material manufacturers who provide items required to complete the project. Contractors and subcontractors actually build the project according to the design plans, which may include architectural drawings. Expeditors track and route purchased items to the site when needed by contractors and subcontractors. The project participants may further include accountants who are responsible for tracking the project's fiscal budget and paying for items purchased. A project manager may manage the participants, approving some or all changes to the project requested by the participants. Additionally, the project owner may participate to ensure that the project meets his or her requirements from initial conception through completion.
A project typically involves many phases including design and build. These phases often overlap and each is highly dynamic. The design phase usually starts with one or more designers creating conceptual drawings of the project according to a developer's direction. The drawings generally include perimeter lines representing specific areas (e.g., restaurants, rooms, lobbies, offices, etc.) within the project. The drawings may also include graphical representations of items within the specified areas. For example, an architect may create a drawing of a restaurant area of a hotel/casino project. The restaurant drawing may include graphical representations of furniture, fixtures, and equipment (FF&E) such as tables, windows, ovens, refrigerators, a backup power generator, etc.
The initial drawings, once completed, are provided to several other project participants involved in the design and build process. For example, the restaurant drawing example above may be provided to one or more structural engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and interior designers for their review, modification, and/or supplementation. These project participants may add further graphical representations of items to the initial set of drawings. An interior designer of the project may wish to add graphical representations of additional items such as chairs or art work to a dining room sub-area of the example restaurant drawing above. A structural engineer may also seek to add graphical representations of items to the restaurant drawing such as a platform on which the backup power generator (graphically represented in the drawing) rests.
When project participants (e.g., engineers, interior designers, etc.) receive initial drawings of the project, the drawings give very little information about the items graphically represented. Typically, the drawings simply identify the items by title or type (e.g., “a table,” “a window,” “a backup power generator”). The engineers, interior designers, and other project participants further define or specify the characteristics or attributes of items originally contained in the drawings or items added to the drawings.
The engineers or designers sometimes annotate specification information on the drawings, but often the engineer or designer creates a separate specification for each item graphically represented on the drawing. For example, an interior designer may create a separate specification for each type of chair graphically represented in the restaurant drawing. Each item specification contains descriptive information (such as size, material and finish, etc.) regarding a type of chair, and may reference other specifications such as fabric. Likewise, an electrical engineer may, for example, create a separate specification for the graphically represented backup power generator describing, for example, the generator's size, power generation capacity, weight, and other attributes.
In addition to providing specifications for items contained on drawings, there are times when drawings are not created or items are not contained on a drawing which is created, but there are still specifications for items required. For instance, in the above restaurant example is remodeled, specifications for new furnishings may be created without a drawing. Alternately the designer may provide an item schedule which list many like items and their distinguishing characteristics or referenced items.
FIG. 1 includes an example of a specification for an item to be included as part of a project. An interior designer developed this specification for an entertainment center to be included in the living room of a suite of a hotel project. Portion 110 of the specification includes general information about the specification, such as a specification number, and the area and project into which the item will be incorporated. Portion 120 includes manufacturer information, distributor information, a description of the item, the dimensions of the item, manufacturer catalog information and the manufacturer catalog description. Portion 130 describes the quantity of the item to be ordered, price information, and budget information for the item. Portion 140 indicates information about receiving a sample of the item, and portion 150 includes information about the finish for the item. Portion 150 also includes notes about the finish, notes about the interior dimensions, and a note that the specification was issued to the purchasing department on May 26, 1998. Portion 160 includes an image of the entertainment center. Portion 170 shows information about other specifications providing information about the entertainment center. Not all portions 110 through 160 are included as part of every specification, and specifications may have portions describing other information not shown.
Other item specifications may contain different data or sections of information. For instance, Portion 120 may list the color, weave, repeat, and pattern for a fabric. The details required are identified by the type of item (e.g., hard furniture, upholstered furniture, fabric, oven, sink, faucet, chiller, etc.) Each of these types will have different characteristics or attributes to be described to differentiate like items. The type of item also may require references to other specifications required for an assembly. For example, furniture may reference fabric and paint while chillers may reference piping and pumps. Attributes and required references must be defined in templates for each type of item specification.
Engineers and designers normally employ software applications for generating specifications for project items for which they have responsibility. These software applications generate electronic versions of specifications into which engineers or interior designers enter descriptive information. Engineers or designers usually enter a reference to a graphical representation in a drawing into the appropriate each specification so that the specification can be associated with an item represented on the drawing. The electronic specifications may be organized as flat files, templates, spreadsheets, or word-processing documents.
Once the engineers or designers finish writing a an item's specification, the specification is ready to be provided or “published” to other project participants for review, modification, supplementation, and/or approval. The engineer or designer can send the specification as e-mail attachments if the recipient has a computer system with appropriate software applications for accessing the attachments. Alternatively, copies of the specification may be printed and distributed. The author saves one copy as the original specification in electronic version form, hard copy form, or both, for archiving purposes. Except for the graphical reference in the specification, specifications are forwarded to other project participants disassociated from their corresponding drawings.
One or more revisions to item specifications may occur throughout the process. Indeed, revisions to an item specification can occur even after the corresponding item is purchased. In this latter case, the purchased item would normally be located and returned to its manufacturer, and the purchase price may be refunded, in whole or in part.
Specification revisions may occur for a variety of reasons by a variety of project participants. For example, the project owner, upon receipt of a specification for one of the restaurant chairs, may desire the chair color to be different than originally specified or determine that the chair as originally specified is too expensive. Another interior designer for the project, upon receipt of the same specification for the restaurant chair, may notice that the originally specified fabric did not include fire treatment in accordance with local fire codes. The structural engineer, upon receipt of the specification for the backup power generator, may notice that his platform may not support the weight of the backup generator specified by the electrical engineer. Each reason for revision is communicated to the original author who, in response, revises the specification accordingly. Once revised, the specification is re-distributed to other project participants for further review, modification, supplementation, and/or approval. The author of the original specification has the responsibility for maintaining a history of all revisions to the specification. The author also has the responsibility to ensure that all necessary project participants have the most recent version of the specification.
Once a specification for an item has been approved by all the necessary project participants, it may be submitted to the project's purchasing agent. The purchasing agent, in turn, may create a purchase order for the item using information from the specification. An example of a purchase order for several items, including the entertainment center of FIG. 1, is shown in FIG. 2. Page 1 of the purchase order shows the entertainment center of FIG. 1 as item 1, page 2 shows orders for other items 2-5, and page 3 shows general notes for the purchase order.
The purchasing agent, like the project engineers and interior designers, may employ a computer system executing specialized software for generating a purchase order. Typically, the purchasing agent manually transfers specification information into the purchase order, as shown in FIG. 2. The purchasing agent subsequently sends the purchase order to manufacturers via hard copy or e-mail attachment. The purchasing agent also sends a copy of the purchase order to the project's accountant.
Coordinating communication of information regarding items in a construction project becomes more complex as the scale of the project increases. Collaboration and the exchange of information, including drawings and item specifications, between design and build participants also increase the complexity of each project. Effective and efficient collaboration is often the single most important key to bringing a project to fruition in a quality, timely and cost effective manner. However, as more fully exemplified above, collaboration and information exchange between participants, is typically a paper-based and chaotic process. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine the history of an item based upon the papers residing at different project participants.
Managing change throughout the life cycle is also difficult in a paper-based or disparate application-based process. Decisions are not always based on all information available, for instance, an owner may choose not change the color of a fabric if the owner had known that the fabric had already been purchased and that a restocking fee would apply.
What is needed is an item data management system that will integrate data throughout the item's lifecycle. Data from the separate applications should be presented as an integrated whole to users of the item data management system. An item data management system that is capable of providing budgeting, design specification, CAD drawings, purchasing, bid processing, receiving, invoicing, location, and maintenance data, or other processes in the item's lifecycle, about an item is desirable.
Integrated data allows change management throughout the process. For example, designers may wish to be notified if they are deleting an item from a drawing that has already been purchased; Specifiers may wish to be notified if they are exceeding the approved budget for an item; Purchasing Agents may wait to purchase items if they know there is a revision in progress; Maintenance personnel may want to know when preventative maintenance is required or a warrantee for an item is expired; etc. The rules for managing these changes and notifications should be configured by project participants.